Birthday Party Details

After all the planning and organizing that went into making Zac's surprise birthday party happen, when the night finally came, I relaxed and enjoyed the celebration. Rather than running around the party and taking pictures of all of the details, I sat back and mingled with all of our guests. Being a scrapbooker and blogger I know better than to let an event go by without taking pictures, but I'm glad that I wasn't glued to my camera the whole night. We captured a few photos here and there, so here are a few of the details from Zac's birthday bash.

I cannot even begin to say how utterly excited I was (and still am) about this cake! I have the BIGGEST thank you to send out to Zac's sister, Sarah, for the creation of this amazing beer mug cake. Seriously....just look at it!

A few months ago, while looking online for ideas for Zac's beer tasting theme party, I came across a picture of a beer mug cake. I sent the photo to Sarah telling her that I thought it would be cool if we could somehow make it for the party. Within roughly 15 minutes, Sarah had sent back a photo of a contraption she had created in her garage that would allow us to suspend an empty beer bottle from the cake. (There are so many reasons why I love her!) We did a little researching online about how to make a great beer flavored cake, as well as tips on how to apply fondant, and other cake decorating ideas. When it came time to make the cake for the party, Sarah and I took a trip to Lowe's to get all of the supplies for our cake. It was quite comical walking up and down the aisles getting a few wooden dowels and a piece of metal.....for a cake.

In the end we made a five layer Guinness chocolate cake with buttercream frosting between each layer. The cake was then covered with vanilla fondant and topped with hand whipped cream cheese frosting. To get the fondant to look like an actual mug full of beer, we purchased two cans of spray food coloring (one yellow, the other orange) and applied some brown food coloring using a sponge brush. A wooden dowel was put in the center of the cake, covered with fondant and sprayed to look like a stream of beer. The beer bottle was rested on a second, smaller dowel that was attached to the larger dowel. To make sure that the bottle didn't move around and fall off of the cake, it was secured with a little glass glue. It turned out better than I could have ever hoped. Thanks to Sarah again for making it happen. Zac was blown away by his birthday cake and everyone agreed that it was also pretty yummy!

Next to the cake, we placed a small chalkboard with "Zac's Bar est. 1981" on it to go along with the beer tasting/pub feel. I found the chalkboard at The Salvation Army for only $2.88. We plan to use it for the wedding on the bar to let our guests know what we have available.

All of the beer was placed outside in a bunch of metal tubs. Next to the beer table we set up a little table with tasting glasses and cards for people to write down beers that they liked and beers they didn't care for.

The cards said "Beers to remember" and "Beers to forget" and had several lines under each category so that guests could keep track of their tastings. At the end of the night guests could take their cards home as a way of remembering the beers they tried at the party.

As I mentioned in yesterday's post, we had some wine for the non beer drinking guests. To make the wine bottles a little more fun I created labels for the occassion (using the same process as when I created labels asking my girls to be bridesmaids). The new labels had the words "Zac's Whine Aged 30 Years" printed above a photo of a crying baby Zac. Everyone got a giggle out of seeing Zac's cute little baby face.

I purchased a pack of clear 9oz. cups for tasting. Since the cups were kind of plain I decided to add a little surprise to each glass by drawing fun mustaches on each one. It was quite fun to watch people bring a glass to their lips and have a little mustache appear.

We set up three 8 foot tables on the lawn in the shape of a 'u' for our guests to sit and enjoy some food and good company. To decorate the tables we placed flowers in empty beer bottles to add a pop of color. Each table also got two beer cups/mugs filled with beer nuts and pretzels. In the center of each table was a little box filled with suckers. Stuck in each box was a sign on a stick that said "30 Sucks!".

We also put a few tea lights on each of the tables to add some nice lighting after the sun went down.The guests seemed to like the atmosphere (and thankfully a cool breeze) outside.

I also couldn't resist lighting our tree lights. It was the first time that we had a large group of guests over since Project Wonderland had gotten underway.

The morning of the party, the boys went to the store and picked up some games for the bbq dinner Zac thought we were having that night. That evening we set up a bean bag toss game, cornhole, and beer pong.

I may have missed out on getting pictures of the table centerpieces, the tissue paper pom poms, and the birthday banner, but it was well worth it to enjoy the party and watch the birthday boy have fun at his surprise bash!

Zac loved having everyone hanging out in our backyard. He's excited to get the backyard projects underway and invite people over for another party so that they can check out our progress. I can't wait to see the changes we can make before the next big party.

Oh No The Big 3-0!

Now that it has been a few days, things have calmed down and Zac and I have had a chance to get things back in order and be normal again. As you might have guessed from the picture on the previous post, we had a little bit of fun this weekend. Let me explain why.

On September 1st, my handsome hubby to be turned 30. Being big on celebrations and parties, I wasn't about to let this milestone birthday go by without throwing Zac a proper bash. Zac has not been too thrilled with the idea of turning 30, so for years I have been teasing him with embarrassing threats plans for the occassion. Over the last few years Zac's sister, Sarah, and I have tossed around ideas for a fun birthday celebration. We knew that while Zac would enjoy a party, if he knew about it ahead of time he would insist that we don't go all out to for his birthday, so we knew that whatever we did, it would have to be a surprise.

At first we had settled on the idea that the party would be a roast! Seriously, how fun would that be?! Zac really loves watching all of the Comedy Central Roasts and we thought that he would get a kick out of being a part of one. However, as his birthday got closer, Sarah and I decided that this party idea probably wasn't the greatest. Although we would have fun writing some speeches to poke fun at the birthday boy, we would also have to ask other family members and some of Zac's friends to write their own mocking speeches and join us on the panel of roasters. As we went through the list of expected guests, we realized that this might not work out. After all, while watching a roast can be pretty entertaining, being asked to attend a party where you have to write jokes that are both funny to others and (as per the rules of a roast) insulting to the guest of honor can be pretty intimidating. Not wanting to speak in front of a large group of people might have deterred some of our guests from joining in on the fun and making guests uncomfortable does not make for a fun party. On top of all of that, as Zac was not too happy with his soon to be 30 status, we figured that cracking jokes at his expense and telling him how much he sucked (even in a fun, light hearted, "we totally love you" atmosphere) probably wasn't the nicest thing we could do on his birthday. We dropped the idea and moved on.

About three months ago, while looking online for fun party ideas (I'm a sucker for a good theme party) I came across the idea of a beer tasting party. It was perfect. Zac loves beer and likes looking for new and interesting beers to try. Lately, he's even talked about getting a kit to make his own beer with his cousin Scott. I couldn't think of a party theme that would be more perfect, or that Zac would enjoy more. I told Sarah about the idea and the two of us got to work on organizing plans to create a fun beer tasting party for Zac.

As his birthday was getting close pretty quickly, the first thing that needed to be done was putting together a guest list and sending out invitations. Being crafty, and enjoying a good diy project, I decided that rather than purchasing invitations, I would put to use my Microsoft Word skills and create some custom invitations myself. This not only made it a lot easier to set the tone of the party and make the invitations go perfectly with the theme, but it also allowed me to make sure that I was able to get all the important party information out to our guests. I am no graphic designer but I think the invitations turned out pretty decent.

To make the party interactive and to make sure that we had enough beer for everyone to taste, I asked all guests to bring a chilled six pack of beer in a particular category. At the bottom of each invitation, I filled in a category (i.e. lager, ale, light, dark, or import) so that each guest brought something different. In the end it worked out prety well and we had a a nice variety. 

To keep the party a surprise and throw Zac off of our trail, our families got together at BJ's Brewhouse and Restaurant on Zac's birthday for a little dinner and celebration. Little did Zac know that the next day there would be over 30 people in our backyard to celebrate.

The next day went by pretty quickly as we all had a lot of prep work to do to get everything in order for the big surprise. The guys got Zac out of the house from noon to 5:30 while the girls and I set up decorations, picked up the rented tables and chairs, worked on the cake, and prepared all of the food. The girls had a lot of tasks to complete, but the boys had their work cut out for them keeping Zac busy, away from the house, and prevent him from being suspicious. Zac really wanted to spend the day at home with his family, relax, and have a b.b.q. dinner. Instead, the boys had him running errands around town, sitting down for a two hour dinner, and hanging out in a pool hall. I wish I could have seen his face each time the guys told him that they weren't heading home.

I did however, get to see his face when he drove up to the house at 5:30 for the beginning of the party, and it was priceless. The boys gave us the heads up when they were nearing the house and all of the guests ran out to the front yard for the big surprise. As the car pulled up, we all yelled 'surprise' and 'happy birthday' and the smile that appeared on Zac's face was worth all of the self control it took to keep this bash a secret.

Zac had a great time talking to all of his friends and family members that were able to make it out for the celebration. The beer was flowing, everyone was laughing and talking, and there was plenty of food to go around. Here he is with two of his favorite guys Scott and Ryan.

Towards the middle of the evening we all gathered in the house to sing 'Happy Birthday' to Zac. The birthday boy seemed a little embarrassed to be the center of attention but by the end of the birthday song you could see in his eyes that he was very touched that all of these people were there to celebrate his birthday.

The amount of beer that we had for the party was incredible. Everyone brought a little something different and before we knew it all of the tubs were filled. We even set an ice chest out to have a place for the overflow. In addition to beer we had some wine, and for the non drinkers we had iced tea, soda, and plenty of water. We knew that there would be a few children in attendance as well so there were also a few bottles of root beer.

In the morning, we gathered up all of the empty bottles just to see what the damage was. There were over 50 empty bottles from the party.

As you may have seen from the last post, this was the sight we were greeted by the next morning.  Needless to say we have plenty of leftovers and with over 80 bottles left, Zac is set for his weekly beer dates with his cousin Scott for quite a while.

I have thrown my fair share of parties, but this was my very first surprise party. I would be lying if I were to say that I knew exactly what I was doing and that everything went smoothly. We definitely had some bumps along the party planning road, but everything really turned out well and I wouldn't change a thing. Thankfully I had a great team of people who love Zac as much as I do and were able to help create such a fun and wonderful party. I owe them all so much for all they did to make the day such a success. Zac was surprised, everyone had a lot of fun, and it was a fantastic party. 

Happy Birthday Zac!!! I love you :)